Parents have been left heartbroken and searching for answers following the devastating news that more than 100 children have died at a public hospital in northern India.
As The BBC reports, there is speculation that unpaid bills may have allegedly meant liquid oxygen supplies at Gorakhpur’s Baba Raghav Das Medical College Hospital ran out.
Heart-wrenching stories have surfaced in the past week of parents who lost their infant children.
A farmer, Brahmadev Yadav, said his wife had given birth to twins a week ago. Their son tragically died and their daughter soon followed. The couple had been trying for children for eight years.
Mr Yadav told BBC Hindi he had seen his daughter split up blood and learnt her lungs had run out of air.
“No one told us anything about oxygen,” he said.
“That’s how all the other children were dying. Everyone was crying, screaming, holding their children in their laps and taking them home. What else could they do?”
The Guardian notes that parents were so desperate to keep their kids alive that some were using manual pumps to force air into the children’s lungs.
Sixty children were reported dead over just five days at the hospital. Most of the children who died were in the neonatal unit or being treated for encephalitis.
As the Hindustan Times reports, the state government said the recent spate of deaths were not caused by an oxygen shortage, and blamed the high death toll on encephalitis.
The head of the Baba Raghav Das hospital has been suspended.
